Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche introduced Graff (1736-1813) as the most significant portraitist of the German Enlightenment and aimed to capture the intellectual and artistic spirit of late eighteenth-century Germany, or, more precisely, Prussia. The exhibition commemorated the 200th anniversary of Graff’s death, and was inspired by the gift from Horst Fraré of an important portrait (Juliane Wilhelmine Bause, c.1785) by Graff to the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. The exhibition was located on the third floor of the gallery, in close and appropriate proximity to other eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century German art. The exhibition was conceived in cooperation with the Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur, Switzerland, the artist’s birthplace, where it was shown prior to coming to Berlin. It brought together around ninety works in oil and fifty works on paper, many of which had been loaned from public collections, but a large number of works were also from private collections. Some of the latter had never been seen in public before. 

This exhibition was the first retrospective of Graff’s work in more than fifty years and aimed to re-discover and evaluate Graff as a chronicler of a society undergoing the transition from Enlightenment to modernity. A substantial catalogue accompanied the exhibition, edited by Marc Fehlmann (Winterthur) and Birgit Verwiebe (Berlin). It contains eight scholarly essays that roughly reflect the themes of the exhibition, two recently discovered autobiographical pieces by Graff, and a number of related appendices. The programme of events organised around the exhibition, entitled ‘Face to Face’, was intellectually coherent and consistently impressive, comprising talks by leading German authors, journalists and academics not just on the work of Graff himself but also the personalities and significance of some of his sitters, for example the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786).

A large map illustrating Graff’s personal network of patrons, sitters, friends and acquaintances was placed at the entrance to the displays, smartly designed to give the impression of a quickly drawn sketch, yet providing a concise and clear image of this artist’s life and times. The map answered several questions at one glance, for example why Graff is not better known in Britain or France. It made clear that Graff’s clientele and geographical working remit were very much located within the cultural triangle of Berlin, Dresden and Weimar, with Leipzig as an additional focal point. Berlin and Dresden provided a lucrative pool of bourgeois and aristocratic patrons, while Weimar, where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Gottfried von Herder and Christoph Martin Wieland resided, provided an intellectual and artistic balance. Graff was Swiss by birth, so it was not surprising to see a few links in Zurich and Winterthur. International links were few and far between, with only Lord Elgin as a contact in London, Mozart in Vienna, Voltaire in Paris and Katharina II in St Petersburg. The map further revealed that Graff probably didn’t embark on any extended travel beyond German-speaking areas, nor was there any indication that he ever travelled to Italy in search of patrons on the Grand Tour. But the contacts he did make were all of utmost importance, the pinnacle of eighteenth-century sophistication and aristocracy. By placing the map at the entrance the curators not only emphasised the success Graff enjoyed in his career, but also the unmistakable focus of his work and this exhibition: people and portraiture. The title of the exhibition, Faces of an Epoch, neatly evoked this. 

Graff was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1736, attended art lessons in his hometown, as well as in Augsburg, Regensburg and Ansbach, and appears to have had a clear idea of his chosen career path from early on. He chose Dresden as his base, from which he travelled frequently to Berlin, Leipzig and Switzerland. Aged only 30, he was appointed court painter to the electoral Saxon court in Dresden and became a member of the prestigious Dresden Academy of the Arts. During his long and remarkable career (he died at the age of 76 in 1813) he produced over two thousand works, predominantly half-length portraits in oil, the vast majority of them commissioned works. 

Most of Graff’s sitters were German, and his extraordinary success as a portrait painter in the German-speaking countries may explain why he did not feel the need to look for work further afield and why his work is relatively unknown in Britain. Among his paintings are some that have become iconic images, such as the portrait of a pensive Friedrich Schiller (in the collection of the Kügelgenhaus, Dresden) and the (in)famous one of the aging Frederick the Great, with eyes as fierce and alive as a young man’s. Two versions of the latter were included in Gesichter einer Epoche, with some explanation as to their quality, provenance and cultural impact (the image was used by Andy Warhol in 1986 for one of his colourful screenprints), though no mention was made either on the labels or in the catalogue entry of the popular myth that this was Hitler’s favourite painting and supposedly adorned the walls of his Berlin bunker. 

The spacious and clean white rooms of the upper floor of the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, are a near perfect exhibition space for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, and Graff’s work sat well there. The display began with one of its most impressive arrangements, a collection of around a dozen self-portraits of the artist, chronologically hung and thus documenting not only his own life but also his art and developing technique. Here we saw a portraitist using his own face, body and soul as a means of perfecting his art. He revealed himself as both deeply embedded in eighteenth-century aesthetic styles and ideals, while at the same time subtly and skilfully transgressing conventions. From these self-portraits alone it became clear that Graff was concerned with much more than representation. His aim was to capture his sitters’ individuality and spirit, their character traits, and at times also their weaknesses and frailties. This led his father-in-law, the philosopher Johan Georg Sulzer, to comment that Graff had the ability to reach into the deepest soul of the sitter. Fittingly, one of Sulzer’s portraits by Graff was included in the exhibition. 

Graff’s portraits and self-portraits are indeed marked by an unusual liveliness and immediacy, where backgrounds are often deliberately devoid of detail or identifiable spatial features. Instead it is the faces, gestures, and expressions that present us with the character of the sitter, aided only by a few carefully chosen props, sartorial elements, or just the hint of an idealised landscape in the background. There is little symbolism in Graff’s portraits, but much emotion and soul. Some of the tricks Graff employed to achieve a particular liveliness were casual poses, a sideways position to the viewer, with the sitter’s head turned over his or her shoulder, giving the impression of movement and direct eye contact with the artist and viewer. Often Graff’s faces emerge from a dark brownish or black background, creating an intense contrast and putting all the emphasis on the sitter’s facial contours, complexion and eyes. This is the case in almost all of Graff’s self-portraits, but it is also particularly effective in the image that was chosen for much of the publicity material for this exhibition, a deeply personal and affectionate full-frontal half-length portrait of Sulzer’s daughter Elisabeth Sophie Auguste, whom Graff would marry shortly after having painted her in 1771. This image was rightly singled out as one of the best examples of Graff’s ‘Blickmagie’, a term coined in 1926 by the Graff critic Otto Waser, describing his magical gift in capturing the emotions, spirit and personality of the sitter by focussing on their eyes and gaze. 

The exhibition managed to convey this Graff magic, to some extent simply by bringing together a wealth of undeniably superior and moving portraits spanning his long career, but also by excellent display and labelling. The paintings were given ample space to breathe and labels were placed at a low level with text in both German and English (with only very few minor translation errors). 

However, through the course of the exhibition the visitor discovered some of Graff’s shortcomings. There is an undoubtable sensuality exuding from many of Graff’s portraits, particularly those of women, which is particularly effective when he uses colour as a more prominent tool, as in his masterful portrait of Sophie Gabain dating from 1795/96, where the sitter is framed by a carefully draped bright red scarf, complementing Sophie’s blue eyes and reflecting her rosy cheeks. This rare use of bold colour only highlights the fact that there is a repetitive and formulaic aspect to many of Graff’s paintings. Seeing dozens of mostly male portraits in sombre brown tones made one wonder if his work would have had even greater impact had he employed colour more often and more daringly. While his portrait style proved popular and led to more commissions than he could cope with, it could be argued that this commercial success may have had a negative impact on his artistic development and creativity. On a material level, too, Graff’s popularity left a mark. The paint surface of a number of his paintings shows a peculiar texture, a wrinkled effect that was particular to his work. The exhibition explained that this was caused by Graff working extremely quickly in order to meet commission deadlines, not allowing paint layers to dry sufficiently before applying another layer or varnish.

While this was an impressive gathering of Graff’s work, a large retrospective exhibition of this kind can also put the viewer at risk of fatigue. The sheer number of portraits displayed was overwhelming and unintentionally revealed Graff’s often formulaic approach and use of repetitive motifs. About half-way through the exhibition I began to look out for the unusual, the unexpected, significant details, and occasionally wished Graff (or his curators, for that matter) had embraced other genres more often. The unusual motif of an outstretched hand in the portrait of the writer Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1795) for example, lifts this painting above most of his other male portraits. As for genre variety, there was a delightful display of landscapes, small in number, mostly depicting views of the area around Dresden. Graff experimented with landscape painting toward the end of his life, responding to, as well as influencing the emerging movement of Romantic artists from the area. It is thought that Graff may well have become some kind of role model to the young Philipp Otto Runge, who was introduced to him in 1801. 

Refreshing, too, were pictures of his children or portraits where the children of sitters were included in the composition; they, by nature, display more movement than most of his other subjects. Die Söhne des Künstlers beim Seifenblasenspiel (The artist’s sons blowing soap bubbles) from 1778, for example, is reminiscent of Chardin’s depictions of children at play, while Die Familie des Künstlers vor dem Bildnis Johann Georg Sulzers (The artist’s family in front of the portrait of Johann Georg Sulzer) from 1785 beautifully captures Graff’s lively, noisy, messy, but loving family and working life, and is testimony to his ability to compose larger-scale group portraits. Of these aspects the exhibition could perhaps have made more, but they are covered in the catalogue text. 

This was certainly an important, impressive and academically strong exhibition of high standard, accompanied by an excellent publication and programme of talks. The only minor criticism is that we had here perhaps too much of a good thing. The magic of Graff’s faces could have been even more effectively communicated by reducing the number of portraits on display, in favour of more contextual visual material and more examples of contemporary artists’ work. One of several suitable examples would have been fellow Swiss-born artist Angelica Kauffman, who in the mid- to late-eighteenth century, like Graff, forged a lucrative career in portrait painting, securing commissions from European intellectuals, aristocracy and royalty, with some of their patrons and circles overlapping.

Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche was at Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur, from 22 June to 29 September 2013 and at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, from 25 October 2013 to 23 February 2014.

The exhibition was accompanied by the catalogue Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche, edited by Marc Fehlmann and Birgit Verwiebe (Hirmer, 2013).